Star Wars: Rogue One's droid was inspired by the Hoth scene in The Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars: Rogue One isn’t far off now - 707 hours, 26 minutes, and 15 seconds, but who’s counting? – and fans of the franchise will be pleased to know the spin-off movie is taking cues from The Empire Strikes Back.

We’ve met Jyn and her plucky band of rebels, but we don’t know much about security robot K-2SO, played by Alan Tudyk, other than the fact he’s a reprogrammed Imperial droid. K-2SO, Kaytoo for short, hopefully follows in the footsteps (droid tracks?) of loveable robot sidekicks R2-D2 and BB-8 but, in an interview with EW, visual effects supervisor John Knoll hints at a darker inspiration taken from Episode 5:

“Kaytoo has a little bit more sinister aspect in his original design,” Knoll explained. “It’s not the first time we’ve seen an Imperial droid… There’s the Imperial probe droid and the sort of interrogation droid that have these black shells and a kind of sinister, evil-looking character to them.”

Those Imperial probe droids are the Viper droids found surveying Hoth for Rebel scum in The Empire Strikes Back. This could reveal more about K-2SO than originally intended. Could he be reprogrammed again to match his original purposes? There’s not long to go 'til we find out…

Directed by Gareth Edwards and starring Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Forest Whitaker, and Mads Mikkelsen, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is released in the UK on December 15 and the US on December 16.